I stopped in to read all the great ideas on how to move forward with rewards in neverwinter.....but I stayed to finish reading someone's warped view on how a clear exploit could be thought of as "creative adventuring".
Can people, for once, accept that this is a videogame based off a licensed property that has it's own set of defined rules and limitations?
This is not tabletop. You don't get bonus points for figuring out how to break the game. Creativity comes in the form of what gear you wear, what powers you use, what group comp you run with, etc. Saying "I creatively found a way to glitch the system" does not make it any less of an exploit.
You know who else was "creatively adventuring"? All those people "creatively" changing the way they ran hunts.
If, as a Dungeon Master, I put a big HAMSTER pit full of deadly spikes in an arena, and my players find a way to trick the Big Bad into the trap that was meant for them, thereby hoisting him by his own petard... then that is NOT a HAMSTER exploit. It is the essence of creativity and imagination you want in your players of a FANTASY ROLE PLAYING GAME that you just can't find in a HAMSTER spreadsheet!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBX2QQHlQ_I The entire of NW is basically an elaborate spreadsheet. I am sorry to say, a spreadsheet that is elaborate enough can do everything a DM can do and more.Here is an example of someone trying to approximate a DM.
Furthermore, tabletop dnd, like mmos, have rules. If you ignored those roles, you would be a poor DM and characters like this could exist within your campaign. That would not make for a very fun player experience, rules exist for a reason. This, funnily enough, is an MMO, not a tabletop game, which means it abides by the rules of an MMO. In these rules, what the player did was clearly defined as an exploit. Its all well and good that you would deem it otherwise in some other game, but this is not that other game.
Nah. That's rubbish.
D&D is a framework for telling a story. Gary Gygax, the guy who invented it said that the rules were there to be used as and when and how required for the game to be fun. I've ignored every rule in those books many times over. At his advice. "A good DM only rolls the dice for the noise they make" is another Gygax view on D&D, but obviously he would have made a "poor DM".
I have, do, and will continue to break every HAMSTER rule in D&D if it makes for a good game. And I don't need your opinion to validate my ability. Jesus... if we hadn't reached "Peak Pomposity" with your earlier observations of intellectual dishonesty we're here now.
And I just spent 15 minutes playing that AI dungeon... Not a great example of how AI is in any way suited to telling a story. I convinced everyone I met, (who were all called Jack, by the way) that they had stolen my horse, and got them to loot the body of the previous Jack while I sharpened my sword and stabbed them in the throat. I think it failed the Turing test on it's reply to my first entry which was "ask woman why she shot my HAMSTER deer".
There is a reason humans write stories while computers produce data. Humans possess an imagination. AI can tell a story but it can't create one, and if THAT is the paragon of where emerging technologies are at with replacing Dungeon Masters, I don't give a fiddler's pluck what a data analyst says about whether I'm a "poor DM" or not, I know that my skills will still be required with the players who prefer an imaginative outcome to their imaginative solutions than some android getting in a tizzy about them "exploiting" a scenario that offered a solution that I hadn't thought of. Because I won't to force them to bear "Cheat" as a permanent attachment to their character, I'll say, "Well done, HAMSTER holes... I didn't think of that."
P.S. here's a note on comedy. The only reason the prolonged joke about "Spreadsheets are great" only works because in the real world everyone knows that they are dull. Very dull, and I first heard the "I Excel-led myself..." joke about 15 years ago at an equally dull seminar, and it was just as funny then... (However, Billy Connolly's use of the "You'll all have to squeeze in a bit" was actually funny 35 years ago)
6
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
D&D is a framework for telling a story. Gary Gygax, the guy who invented it said that the rules were there to be used as and when and how required for the game to be fun. I've ignored every rule in those books many times over. At his advice. "A good DM only rolls the dice for the noise they make" is another Gygax view on D&D, but obviously he would have made a "poor DM".
I have, do, and will continue to break every HAMSTER rule in D&D if it makes for a good game. And I don't need your opinion to validate my ability. Jesus... if we hadn't reached "Peak Pomposity" with your earlier observations of intellectual dishonesty we're here now.
And I just spent 15 minutes playing that AI dungeon... Not a great example of how AI is in any way suited to telling a story. I convinced everyone I met, (who were all called Jack, by the way) that they had stolen my horse, and got them to loot the body of the previous Jack while I sharpened my sword and stabbed them in the throat. I think it failed the Turing test on it's reply to my first entry which was "ask woman why she shot my HAMSTER deer".
There is a reason humans write stories while computers produce data. Humans possess an imagination. AI can tell a story but it can't create one, and if THAT is the paragon of where emerging technologies are at with replacing Dungeon Masters, I don't give a fiddler's pluck what a data analyst says about whether I'm a "poor DM" or not, I know that my skills will still be required with the players who prefer an imaginative outcome to their imaginative solutions than some android getting in a tizzy about them "exploiting" a scenario that offered a solution that I hadn't thought of. Because I won't to force them to bear "Cheat" as a permanent attachment to their character, I'll say, "Well done, HAMSTER holes... I didn't think of that."
P.S. here's a note on comedy. The only reason the prolonged joke about "Spreadsheets are great" only works because in the real world everyone knows that they are dull. Very dull, and I first heard the "I Excel-led myself..." joke about 15 years ago at an equally dull seminar, and it was just as funny then... (However, Billy Connolly's use of the "You'll all have to squeeze in a bit" was actually funny 35 years ago)
I see you missed the point of the sentence, "someone trying to approximate." Because obviously, AI is not there yet. But I would be a fool to assume that it won't be there eventually. I am not so arrogant as to think that the imaginings of man cannot be replicated by a machine. Man is just an advanced machine made by nature, given the time for the technology to develop, machines will eventually be able to do the same and will probably exceed us as well.
There is irony in someone saying spreadsheets are dull when they are playing a game which is essentially a spreadsheet with a pretty front end and that goes for any game you play. All games are at their core spreadsheets and you care enough about this particular spreadsheet to spend time arguing about it.
And as has been mentioned by numerous people in this thread, this game is not dnd. It is an mmo, set in the dnd universe. It doesn't even resemble dnd. People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game.
D&D is a framework for telling a story. Gary Gygax, the guy who invented it said that the rules were there to be used as and when and how required for the game to be fun. I've ignored every rule in those books many times over. At his advice. "A good DM only rolls the dice for the noise they make" is another Gygax view on D&D, but obviously he would have made a "poor DM".
I have, do, and will continue to break every HAMSTER rule in D&D if it makes for a good game. And I don't need your opinion to validate my ability. Jesus... if we hadn't reached "Peak Pomposity" with your earlier observations of intellectual dishonesty we're here now.
And I just spent 15 minutes playing that AI dungeon... Not a great example of how AI is in any way suited to telling a story. I convinced everyone I met, (who were all called Jack, by the way) that they had stolen my horse, and got them to loot the body of the previous Jack while I sharpened my sword and stabbed them in the throat. I think it failed the Turing test on it's reply to my first entry which was "ask woman why she shot my HAMSTER deer".
There is a reason humans write stories while computers produce data. Humans possess an imagination. AI can tell a story but it can't create one, and if THAT is the paragon of where emerging technologies are at with replacing Dungeon Masters, I don't give a fiddler's pluck what a data analyst says about whether I'm a "poor DM" or not, I know that my skills will still be required with the players who prefer an imaginative outcome to their imaginative solutions than some android getting in a tizzy about them "exploiting" a scenario that offered a solution that I hadn't thought of. Because I won't to force them to bear "Cheat" as a permanent attachment to their character, I'll say, "Well done, HAMSTER holes... I didn't think of that."
P.S. here's a note on comedy. The only reason the prolonged joke about "Spreadsheets are great" only works because in the real world everyone knows that they are dull. Very dull, and I first heard the "I Excel-led myself..." joke about 15 years ago at an equally dull seminar, and it was just as funny then... (However, Billy Connolly's use of the "You'll all have to squeeze in a bit" was actually funny 35 years ago)
I see you missed the point of the sentence, "someone trying to approximate." Because obviously, AI is not there yet. But I would be a fool to assume that it won't be there eventually. I am not so arrogant as to think that the imaginings of man cannot be replicated by a machine. Man is just an advanced machine made by nature, given the time for the technology to develop, machines will eventually be able to do the same and will probably exceed us as well.
There is irony in someone saying spreadsheets are dull when they are playing a game which is essentially a spreadsheet with a pretty front end and that goes for any game you play. All games are at their core spreadsheets and you care enough about this particular spreadsheet to spend time arguing about it.
And as has been mentioned by numerous people in this thread, this game is not dnd. It is an mmo, set in the dnd universe. It doesn't even resemble dnd. People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game.
I sincerely disagree with this. A large part of the appeal of this gamefor me is the D&D story side. It's bringing flowers to private Taliren in the Chasm, it's meeting Acererak and writing another chapter of his story, it's entering a Thayan Zulkir lair, it's talking to Bruenor, Drizzt and all the others in Bruenor's hall at the end of the Maze Engine campaign, it's seeing an Atropal,it's facing Demogorgon. it's stopping at Wilfred's shrine on Castle Never bridge and remember him, it's worrying about Makos and what's going to happen him, it's riding up Kelvin's Cairn and sit up there like Drizzt does in the book, or sit on the shore of Maer Dualdon feeling like Regis, it's finding again Tearulai in the Willowwood and remember it is the sword wielded by my main D&D character,
The spreadsheet as you describe it is a mean to let the story unfold and to let me have fun on the action side of the game, no more than that. I have no interest in ACT, no interest in evaluating the impact of small bonuses, very little interest in stats. I want to play an action game within a D&D world and that's what keeps me in this game.
Sorry but AI is way from being as imaginative as a DM. A good DM can pull content out of nowhere in seconds, can adapt a story to its players, can look in the eyes of a player and see that some detail hooked his-her attention and build around it. There may be a day when AI would be as good as a Dm but that's way in the future.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
8
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
edited February 2020
You are talking about different things
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
1
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Pretty much this and the dnd books are no better. I tried reading a couple of them, the story telling was not what I consider good, at all and I am someone who likes well written fantasy.
Lets stop with the dramatics. Accusing these people of being cheaters and violating terms of service is not only blowing what was talked about here out of proportion, its also completely derailing the topic and missing the points people were making that were related to the CDP.
This is another example of why so few voices are heard on the forums. Shy and less confrontational people have good ideas too but no way to share without exposing themselves to the wolves. And before someone says "this is the internet". no, this isnt the general internet. this is a place where we come because we share a love for a GAME. Everyone that wants a voice should be able to share in its development (since input has been asked for) even if they dont have that confrontational personality that people seems to think are required for valid input. Long before today, I have wanted some sort of way to submit in-game feedback without coming to the forums. Other games have it where you can submit an idea in-game that may not warrant a whole post or you can even give kudos for some detail you liked. (NW currently just uses this for bug reporting)
Back to the current topic. Looking over posts its clear that people are not looking to destroy the game..quite the opposite. Everyone here wants to see the game succeed. They are not your enemies and their ideas/opinions/playstyles are just as valid.
This is what brainstorming is: throwing out ideas, even if they are way out there, and see where things go. .after all, we were invited along to help in "building worlds" and that statement was clearly suppose to inspire us and spark our imaginations. As a long-time gamer, i enjoy the thinking outside of the box ideas brought up. some of the stories reminded me of when I first got into gaming and was exploring my environments, always looking for possibilities.
"People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game."
Perhaps, it may not ultimately be the game some of us hope it will be, but it certainly wont be if people dont share their ideas. The directions the game has been going apparently isnt working for enough people, so some alternate perspectives are needed.
The spirit of what a lot of people are asking for is simply more options. What this debate has demonstrated is that peoples perceptions of fun are different. Increasing options could potentially cater to both types of people debating. After all, in D&D there is room for both Lawful Good and Chaotic Good alignments to exist
9
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Pretty much this and the dnd books are no better. I tried reading a couple of them, the story telling was not what I consider good, at all and I am someone who likes well written fantasy.
I guess you and me are in different subsets, but believe me there are many more like me. Honestly I find the side you like the most boring of the game. Tomm for example could be scrapped from the game and I won't even feel it.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
6
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Lets stop with the dramatics. Accusing these people of being cheaters and violating terms of service is not only blowing what was talked about here out of proportion, its also completely derailing the topic and missing the points people were making that were related to the CDP.
This is another example of why so few voices are heard on the forums. Shy and less confrontational people have good ideas too but no way to share without exposing themselves to the wolves. And before someone says "this is the internet". no, this isnt the general internet. this is a place where we come because we share a love for a GAME. Everyone that wants a voice should be able to share in its development (since input has been asked for) even if they dont have that confrontational personality that people seems to think are required for valid input. Long before today, I have wanted some sort of way to submit in-game feedback without coming to the forums. Other games have it where you can submit an idea in-game that may not warrant a whole post or you can even give kudos for some detail you liked. (NW currently just uses this for bug reporting)
Back to the current topic. Looking over posts its clear that people are not looking to destroy the game..quite the opposite. Everyone here wants to see the game succeed. They are not your enemies and their ideas/opinions/playstyles are just as valid.
This is what brainstorming is: throwing out ideas, even if they are way out there, and see where things go. .after all, we were invited along to help in "building worlds" and that statement was clearly suppose to inspire us and spark our imaginations. As a long-time gamer, i enjoy the thinking outside of the box ideas brought up. some of the stories reminded me of when I first got into gaming and was exploring my environments, always looking for possibilities.
"People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game."
Perhaps, it may not ultimately be the game some of us hope it will be, but it certainly wont be if people dont share their ideas. The directions the game has been going apparently isnt working for enough people, so some alternate perspectives are needed.
The spirit of what a lot of people are asking for is simply more options. What this debate has demonstrated is that peoples perceptions of fun are different. Increasing options could potentially cater to both types of people debating. After all, in D&D there is room for both Lawful Good and Chaotic Good alignments to exist
I've been in gaming communities online for YEARS now. I can safely say that gaming zones are the least "safe spaces" in nearly all the internet. : because of the moderation this is actually one of the tamest game forums I've been in. there will always be people who will disagree with you. it also works to state your piece and just not follow up with the comments. there will always be debates in conversations like this. this game is on the lifesupport right now. there are definitely ways to kill the game and there are ways to make it thrive. I personally get vocal when i hear someone say something that I'm pretty sure might sound good to someone but in reality would have an opposite effect.
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
This is pretty much what I was trying to say, but as usual much better. Not everybody wants to be the last 1% to squeeze out 0.1% dmg, and that you seem to think the game HAS to be about that is in itself an opinion and NOT what the others "have to learn" or "have to understand" or have to sit in a lesson about player perception. We are all here because we enjoy something about the game, and to think that the game would only have a healthy existence if it followed your guidelines of gaming is simply not true. No matter how often you try to push your narrative on others, or trying to devalue others wishes for the game. This is not about elitism in the game, or about tomm, or about how often you help your guildmates, it is about devaluing others to improve the value of your own opinions. It's fine you think you value well written fantasy, it might be true, but others do think different, and both is no good sole (!) viewpoint to impact the game, no matter how elaborate you might word it. You can tell people 100 times that it is "only" a mmo and they have to get over it, but NW didn't sell as just a MMO. There are other MMOs. Dnd is NWs USP. You cannot have NW as only a MMO, and NW is not only dnd.
That does not cut short what you have done for the community, or what you continue to do for guildmates or whoever, I don't know, because I care for my guildmates and whoever as I am able and from where I come from, too. All in all this has been a lot of input already on the CDP, and the decision what we will see in the game is not on us (I hope its not, cause who really is on the forum? Mostly everybody on the last five pages I already know from the forums, some even ingame), no matter how nice it is sold now. If it is heavily influenced by what you wrote, then so be it, thats fine. You make valid arguments, and you will be right for the kind of game you want to see.
(I did not yet read the last post, I will tho. It was on after I was done writing)
- bye bye -
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
I'm not sure I implied anything about D&D books. I don't really know how to classify them as D&D or not. While today I don't read as much, I'm over ~600 read books, mostly Fantasy and Sci-Fi, that including the Dragonlance series (though it was about 20 year ago), at the time, for me as a teenager, it was great series, now things probably changed as I have much more to compare with, as experience and points of view change.
In regards to NW, I can't point a single mod, where the story was worth following. I'll admit that I'm not impressed with forgotten realms nor read the books nor plan to. But I can point out so so many games that the dialog and story were the driving force there, and none of them is NW, in any mod.
Again I don't point fingers on the devs here, as much as I would like engaging story, I understand the limitations of their release cycle and need for repeated "fetch quests"
I believe you mistake the "subsets" here. I have the original CDs of BG1 with the map still lying around somewhere, and consider planscape torment as one of the better games, with original fallout and many more, including countless hours with old stuff like eye of the beholder. I don't do spreadsheets to play games (yes, shocking), my intuition and reading the in-game information is usually enough to get by, and I don't aim for some hardcore difficulty or whatever. NW a semi exception, that while I still don't aim to min-max to exceptional levels (I was always good stage behind BiS just for the sheer investment it took to upkeep), the tooltips and mechanics explanation were so poorly done that it forced me to sit and try to understand it, because for me there is a limit of how many months I can play and still have no clue which item I want to put on, which then was an incentive to make some tools to make it easier.
But I will not login to NW for the "beat demogorgon with Drizzt", I will login for the community (not the general one, but guild, friends etc.) and the group content I do with them. All the rest is a fluff. And while ofc everyone plays for whatever reason they choose, and I'm not here to tell anyone to not play or not enjoy the parts they want. The complete vast majority of the players, even those that familiar well with the entire background story and lore, do not mainly play because of it. They may started or joined because of it, but stayed for mainly other reasons. (I too tried this game because of the Neverwinter name, and ofc I've liked the original NW:Nights series and Ice wind dale games and so many more D&D / RPG games)
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
This is pretty much what I was trying to say, but as usual much better. Not everybody wants to be the last 1% to squeeze out 0.1% dmg, and that you seem to think the game HAS to be about that is in itself an opinion and NOT what the others "have to learn" or "have to understand" or have to sit in a lesson about player perception. We are all here because we enjoy something about the game, and to think that the game would only have a healthy existence if it followed your guidelines of gaming is simply not true. No matter how often you try to push your narrative on others, or trying to devalue others wishes for the game. This is not about elitism in the game, or about tomm, or about how often you help your guildmates, it is about devaluing others to improve the value of your own opinions. It's fine you think you value well written fantasy, it might be true, but others do think different, and both is no good sole (!) viewpoint to impact the game, no matter how elaborate you might word it. You can tell people 100 times that it is "only" a mmo and they have to get over it, but NW didn't sell as just a MMO. There are other MMOs. Dnd is NWs USP. You cannot have NW as only a MMO, and NW is not only dnd.
That does not cut short what you have done for the community, or what you continue to do for guildmates or whoever, I don't know, because I care for my guildmates and whoever as I am able and from where I come from, too. All in all this has been a lot of input already on the CDP, and the decision what we will see in the game is not on us (I hope its not, cause who really is on the forum? Mostly everybody on the last five pages I already know from the forums, some even ingame), no matter how nice it is sold now. If it is heavily influenced by what you wrote, then so be it, thats fine. You make valid arguments, and you will be right for the kind of game you want to see.
(I did not yet read the last post, I will tho. It was on after I was done writing)
I'm not sure how we got to this, my main replies about ToMM are to push back some nonsense mainly written by a couple of posters and include misinformation and lies. If someone do not like ToMM or any other content, it is completely their right. I do not argue about subjective parts. About implications of hard content, and tiered, or other design considerations, sure.
This more or less started about the spikes and the boss, and I'm 100% for an option to pull the boss to some piked corridor, where, for example, players need to run in parallel corridor, ahead of the tank, clear them from evil things, press buttons to cover the spikes, temprarly so the tank can continue, while pushing the boss through the spikes and killing him, that was not the case there.
Would love some alternate options which are not purely smash and bash, and I can find posts of mine about it from years ago (please don't actually ask me to do this, it will be extremely time consuming with my post count, but trust me it's there)
Or the throwing mobs into the lava in SP, imo it was a great shame it was removed. Using the terrain should be part of the game, and more of it. If it was up to me, SP lava would be a thing or throwing mobs from a cliff. In M18 closed beta, it was one of the first things I asked to try in Citadel run (can we push them there) and I was disappointed to discover that no. I suggested that it will be great fun if imps can be pushed and drag a player with them :P
But regardless of my personal wishes of alternate game styles, there is no single doubt to me, that pushing the boss outside that specific room through a barrier that was intended to prevent exactly that, was a bug, and not intended in the dungeon design.
--- We probably should ask a mod to move this discussion to some new open thread, where we can continue without offtopicing the CDP. Though perhaps it is something that will interest some powers that be.
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
This is pretty much what I was trying to say, but as usual much better. Not everybody wants to be the last 1% to squeeze out 0.1% dmg, and that you seem to think the game HAS to be about that is in itself an opinion and NOT what the others "have to learn" or "have to understand" or have to sit in a lesson about player perception. We are all here because we enjoy something about the game, and to think that the game would only have a healthy existence if it followed your guidelines of gaming is simply not true. No matter how often you try to push your narrative on others, or trying to devalue others wishes for the game. This is not about elitism in the game, or about tomm, or about how often you help your guildmates, it is about devaluing others to improve the value of your own opinions. It's fine you think you value well written fantasy, it might be true, but others do think different, and both is no good sole (!) viewpoint to impact the game, no matter how elaborate you might word it. You can tell people 100 times that it is "only" a mmo and they have to get over it, but NW didn't sell as just a MMO. There are other MMOs. Dnd is NWs USP. You cannot have NW as only a MMO, and NW is not only dnd.
That does not cut short what you have done for the community, or what you continue to do for guildmates or whoever, I don't know, because I care for my guildmates and whoever as I am able and from where I come from, too. All in all this has been a lot of input already on the CDP, and the decision what we will see in the game is not on us (I hope its not, cause who really is on the forum? Mostly everybody on the last five pages I already know from the forums, some even ingame), no matter how nice it is sold now. If it is heavily influenced by what you wrote, then so be it, thats fine. You make valid arguments, and you will be right for the kind of game you want to see.
(I did not yet read the last post, I will tho. It was on after I was done writing)
I am well aware that there are different types of players. Much more aware than I think you realize. I also think you don't really understand my point of view really well. I am someone who enjoys puzzles. I like strategy games, puzzle games and fantasy rpgs (in general, I have played most western rpgs, starting from pool of radiance). The aspect of the game that draws me in to all of these games however, is that I see them all as puzzles, where I am trying to find the solution to a puzzle. In a strategy game, it is usually the win condition, in an rpg, it is how to make a character work and in a puzzle game, well, it is just solving puzzles. Unfortunately, there haven't been many games like myst released recently, I liked the myst games. When it comes to books, I am very fussy when it comes to what I consider good. My experience with the dnd books was books where they literally have things like, "the wizard casts fireball," in the text (its been 10y I think since I read one, so I am going off memory here) and that is not what I consider good writing material.
I am also not trying to devalue anyone else's point of view (although, I concede I probably come across as if I am). But I will argue with people if I disagree with them. The fact of the matter is, even if you could magically turn this into a dnd game, you shouldn't. The funny thing is, I would probably still play that game, because I like rpgs. There are a lot of people however, who would not play that game, because that is not the game nw is and it is not a change that should be made.
Could NW do alternate dungeon solutions? Yes, but its very resource intensive to do it in a way that does not upset the people who play NW because it is an MMO. It is probably not a good idea to do so. Just like alternate quest solutions are also very resource intensive and that is something that chris has already said will not be happening. The fact is, shoehorning things like the eCC exploit into the game as a legitimate solution just isn't something you can directly do without putting some effort into modifying how it is done, because the time to kill the boss is different for pitting vs killing and thus would need to be balanced differently in terms of rewards.
D&D is a framework for telling a story. Gary Gygax, the guy who invented it said that the rules were there to be used as and when and how required for the game to be fun. I've ignored every rule in those books many times over. At his advice. "A good DM only rolls the dice for the noise they make" is another Gygax view on D&D, but obviously he would have made a "poor DM".
I have, do, and will continue to break every HAMSTER rule in D&D if it makes for a good game. And I don't need your opinion to validate my ability. Jesus... if we hadn't reached "Peak Pomposity" with your earlier observations of intellectual dishonesty we're here now.
And I just spent 15 minutes playing that AI dungeon... Not a great example of how AI is in any way suited to telling a story. I convinced everyone I met, (who were all called Jack, by the way) that they had stolen my horse, and got them to loot the body of the previous Jack while I sharpened my sword and stabbed them in the throat. I think it failed the Turing test on it's reply to my first entry which was "ask woman why she shot my HAMSTER deer".
There is a reason humans write stories while computers produce data. Humans possess an imagination. AI can tell a story but it can't create one, and if THAT is the paragon of where emerging technologies are at with replacing Dungeon Masters, I don't give a fiddler's pluck what a data analyst says about whether I'm a "poor DM" or not, I know that my skills will still be required with the players who prefer an imaginative outcome to their imaginative solutions than some android getting in a tizzy about them "exploiting" a scenario that offered a solution that I hadn't thought of. Because I won't to force them to bear "Cheat" as a permanent attachment to their character, I'll say, "Well done, HAMSTER holes... I didn't think of that."
P.S. here's a note on comedy. The only reason the prolonged joke about "Spreadsheets are great" only works because in the real world everyone knows that they are dull. Very dull, and I first heard the "I Excel-led myself..." joke about 15 years ago at an equally dull seminar, and it was just as funny then... (However, Billy Connolly's use of the "You'll all have to squeeze in a bit" was actually funny 35 years ago)
I see you missed the point of the sentence, "someone trying to approximate." Because obviously, AI is not there yet. But I would be a fool to assume that it won't be there eventually. I am not so arrogant as to think that the imaginings of man cannot be replicated by a machine. Man is just an advanced machine made by nature, given the time for the technology to develop, machines will eventually be able to do the same and will probably exceed us as well.
There is irony in someone saying spreadsheets are dull when they are playing a game which is essentially a spreadsheet with a pretty front end and that goes for any game you play. All games are at their core spreadsheets and you care enough about this particular spreadsheet to spend time arguing about it.
And as has been mentioned by numerous people in this thread, this game is not dnd. It is an mmo, set in the dnd universe. It doesn't even resemble dnd. People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game.
No, just measuring your bull HAMSTER claim about an elaborate enough spreadsheet one day being able to do more than a human DM against where reality sits.
If you honestly think calling spreadsheets dull is ironic because all games are just glorified spreadsheets, then I think I've found the issue. You either don't understand irony, or why humans play games. I'll admit that a spreadsheet can be useful in keeping track of stuff...(note books and pencils work just as well in human games) but to call D&D a spreadsheet is just reductive nonsense. Show me "Dungeons and Dragons" the spreadsheet, and I'll show you a completely pointless waste of time and effort. (There's a reason they come in a narrative, informative, book format; the humans who play these games like to have things presented to them in less sterile data streams than the efficiency of the mighty spreadsheet.)
You keep saying "It's not D&D it's an MMO" like those two things are somehow mutually exclusive. D&D has existed in different formats since there were two variants of the game in table top form, Basic and Advanced. I also had "Eye of the Beholder" for my Commodore Amiga, and it said "Dungeons and Dragons" on the box but I'm guessing that was wrong too...
Anyway, I know you don't like that some of us want the game to be more reflective of it's source material. That's why you said;
DnD is a set of rules, it is not lore or names of powers. This game uses none of the rules of the dnd system, hence it is not a dnd game. It doesn't matter how much you want to imagine it is, it is not a dnd game, but keep living in that fantasy world in your head where it is.
...when people simply wanted the new spell for Wizards to be changed to "Fireball" during the Mod 16 Preview feedback.
Patronising, pompous, and guess what. Not only did the devs change it to Fireball, (because... FFS, why wouldn't they) the fact that they did so made into the marketing for Mod 16! They actually seemed keen to share it. The wizards in our D&D game finally have the most iconic spell in D&D... What's most baffling is why you can't see why that stuff matters. You don't see that human connection, therefore it's irrelevant, and those who do see it are deluded fantasists, and should be looking for another game...
As long as Cryptic are using the character classes, races, Gods, monsters, and lore of the Forgotten Realms in an officially licensed game that bears it's name... guess what sunshine... YOU don't get to decide. D&D became more than "a set of rules" a long time ago. Before the first D&D mmo, before the first "modder" uploaded their own created content for NWN, and before the movies, and comic books, and novels, and probably all the way back to the damnable cartoon series in the mid 80's. YOU don't get to decide. I know that's a phrase you aren't used to hearing but sorry, Neverwinter, the mmo, IS Dungeons and Dragons. I know that because it says Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter every time I load the game, and WoTC haven't sued anyone over it.
Make this game all about the vertical vs horizontal progression inter-matrices and stack the pie charts to the roof as much as you want, create a soulless vessel for you to forge the next BiS guide to ladder climbing, but forget the heart and soul of the game that brought a lot of us to it at your peril. And repeatedly describing people who hold fast to the idea that the game IS Dungeons and Dragons as witless fantasists is the road to go down if you do want to HAMSTER us off.
But to be fair, it wouldn't hurt Cryptic if I moved over to another game, because the people down the hall at Star Trek seem to understand that if you keep the core of the subject matter central to the game, oddly enough you don't need to keep redesigning the framework every couple of years.
i also like a good story but this game has never ever delivered that part for me. if you can't impart a story during actual game play it isn't getting thru. if you expect me to find lore and read it.. it ain't happening. I've never found anything in this game engrossing enough that'd I'd do that. If I wanted to read it (other than subtitles) I'd sit down and read a book. I might have enjoyed the 1-80 path more if it had been a clear story but I never got that. it was just a bunch of pointless dumb quests. I agree with the statements that this is just a game set in the d and d universe not d and d.
I do too. But it is at least implied that it can be seen as another way to explore dnd universe, just like card players view Magic Legends now. Nobody can be blamed for wanting to play it because of Dnd. If they are disappointed or not by the story (or lack thereof) ingame is another matter. I'm not here for Dnd, either, but many of my friends are. I can see the difficulty of creating something that is supposed to satisfy all of us as equally as possible.
I'm not sure how we got to this, my main replies about ToMM are to push back some nonsense mainly written by a couple of posters and include misinformation and lies. If someone do not like ToMM or any other content, it is completely their right. I do not argue about subjective parts. About implications of hard content, and tiered, or other design considerations, sure.
This more or less started about the spikes and the boss, and I'm 100% for an option to pull the boss to some piked corridor, where, for example, players need to run in parallel corridor, ahead of the tank, clear them from evil things, press buttons to cover the spikes, temprarly so the tank can continue, while pushing the boss through the spikes and killing him, that was not the case there.
Would love some alternate options which are not purely smash and bash, and I can find posts of mine about it from years ago (please don't actually ask me to do this, it will be extremely time consuming with my post count, but trust me it's there)
Or the throwing mobs into the lava in SP, imo it was a great shame it was removed. Using the terrain should be part of the game, and more of it. If it was up to me, SP lava would be a thing or throwing mobs from a cliff. In M18 closed beta, it was one of the first things I asked to try in Citadel run (can we push them there) and I was disappointed to discover that no. I suggested that it will be great fun if imps can be pushed and drag a player with them :P
But regardless of my personal wishes of alternate game styles, there is no single doubt to me, that pushing the boss outside that specific room through a barrier that was intended to prevent exactly that, was a bug, and not intended in the dungeon design.
--- We probably should ask a mod to move this discussion to some new open thread, where we can continue without offtopicing the CDP. Though perhaps it is something that will interest some powers that be.
I'm not exactly sure about how we got here either, but thank you for elaborating. I believe you have posts about nearly everything, so I will not ask More about that...
I am well aware that there are different types of players. Much more aware than I think you realize. I also think you don't really understand my point of view really well. I am someone who enjoys puzzles. I like strategy games, puzzle games and fantasy rpgs (in general, I have played most western rpgs, (starting from pool of radiance). The aspect of the game that draws me in to all of these games however, is that I see them all as puzzles, where I am trying to find the solution to a puzzle. In a strategy game, it is usually the win condition, in an rpg, it is how to make a character work and in a puzzle game, well, it is just solving puzzles. Unfortunately, there haven't been many games like myst released recently, I liked the myst games. When it comes to books, I am very fussy when it comes to what I consider good. My experience with the dnd books was books where they literally have things like, "the wizard casts fireball," in the text (its been 10y I think since I read one, so I am going off memory here) and that is not what I consider good writing material.
I am also not trying to devalue anyone else's point of view (although, I concede I probably come across as if I am). But I will argue with people if I disagree with them. The fact of the matter is, even if you could magically turn this into a dnd game, you shouldn't. The funny thing is, I would probably still play that game, because I like rpgs. There are a lot of people however, who would not play that game, because that is not the game nw is and it is not a change that should be made.
Could NW do alternate dungeon solutions? Yes, but its very resource intensive to do it in a way that does not upset the people who play NW because it is an MMO. It is probably not a good idea to do so. Just like alternate quest solutions are also very resource intensive and that is something that chris has already said will not be happening. The fact is, shoehorning things like the eCC exploit into the game as a legitimate solution just isn't something you can directly do without putting some effort into modifying how it is done, because the time to kill the boss is different for pitting vs killing and thus would need to be balanced differently in terms of rewards.
You are right, I do not understand it (or at least, I seldomly do, I try) and I won't try to tell if you can see mine, because I think we (our minds) work very differently. I have an emotional approach to respones, I assume, which is a problem with how well (or not at all) I can approach a topic, I apologize.
Alternate dungeon solutions are an option, and they can consider it. In the end, it is like you said, about resources, priority, and ultimately about what kind of player they think they need to keep the most. This is something that we kept hearing about all the time, resources. They have the resources to do an (in)complete overhaul of something only to abandon it later, and we are here late in the evening (for me) discussing all of this because ultimately, they miscalculated. After all, using ecc as an example for alternate dungeon running methods may not have been the best idea, but I am pretty sure everybody could've seen past that, if they wanted. Lending players an ear for the first time in who knows how long was bound to create some very extensive (and intense) arguments about even the smallest things, but in the end, ingame, mostly everybody that has been playing NW for some time has some idea about exploiting and what it is. Most people I play with know that. Before huntgate, this was handled more carelessly, now for every little bug there is at least one alliance member asking "Is that an exploit?" I am not telling guild members to glitch bosses, nor do I think they will give us this ingame. I'm not an idiot. But it is very telling that new players may not know much about mechanics of FBI, but they might still ask about the glitch they have seen in a vid. NW has had a history with a lot of weird stuff staying ingame for a weirdly long time, that we are discussing exploits again after the cursed huntgate-something-thread is just telling that it has been a part of the game for too long to leave doors open so wide that people wonder if it is really illegal to go in.
But yes, I am aware that a wide open door is still not an invite.
A few people have said that the story just isn't there in NW, I agree it isn't. The opening video was very misleading in my opinion and yes, looking back, the title, and that video, was basically one big click-bait that I fell victim to.
However, it doesn't have to be that way. I would totally like to see the game be more story-centric. If they did, in an immersive way, I would totally delete my cleric (I really never look forward to playing that class) and replay the game just to experience it. Improving the storyline doesn't mean they need to forget about combat. A good story is rewarding when you can feel compelled to pay attention to it.
As for combat, I would like to see some of the old features (pre-m16) of some powers come back, they made combat feel more dynamic (I'm looking at you entangling force on tab). Those little additional features were rewarding in and of themselves when they were effective in combat, even just as a utility that wasn't majorly game changing.
Just a couple things that affect the feel of the game, and give our brains little squirts of dopamine that keep us entertained. This is probably why so many people don't like the long CD's on encounter powers that came with the removal of Recovery, much fewer jolts of brain juicy goodness and much less frequent. Although, there are times when the stars align and your daily and encounters and stealth and artifact are all ready to go, and for 10 seconds you get a nice exhilarating thrill (that's what she said at least).
Point being that there are "micro" and "macro" rewards. The micro-rewards might be worth investigating as well, such as emotional investment in the story, side quests, the extra effects we lost on powers, increasing proc-rates and reducing magnitudes on some features (basically just to increase animation rate (think SS on CW)) of some features (think slot-machine effect, but for powers). The "macro-rewards" being stuff like items (gear, mounts, pets...), achievements, titles, and stuff like that.
I think we've drilled in a lot into gear/stats as rewards, and a lot of people have spoke about horizontal/vertical progression. I put in a few ideas for SH's, and I think I could expand on that, go into more detail, maybe clear it up a bit, but I'm sure there's a lot more we could do for SH's than the basics ideas I put forward.
Ah yes, I see there has been much strife in my absence.
I think its important to review why this CDP format is here for us, and specifically why I am here. This structure is explicitly the initial step in a process to elicit new ideas.
From the CDP rules: These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter.
The initial phase of such a process is only useful if people are supported in expressing new ideas and variants on the old. Its not appropriate to evaluate the specifics, discuss the nth detail of implementation, engage in character judgment exercises, or opine on legalistic TOS valuations that are frankly not within the scope of judgment or responsibility for anyone not employed by Cryptic.
Truly we are not here to listen to you Fabricant, mick1p00, or indeed me either. We have an E.P. Taking time out to read page after page of this this drivel even while he is sick in order to spur creativity and life within the Neverwinter community.
Yet we have a subset of individuals that have taken it upon themselves within this format to be the morality police and self styled judges of what 'can be', what will make NW cease to be NW, what qualifies as D&D, what everyone plays for, and what others should enjoy. ..and if you take exception to these sentences you are indeed part of the problem in this context.
There are some changes that can be made to the game and there are others that can't be, because then the game would not be what it is now. There are a lot of things I want in a game, which I do not suggest, because I acknowledge that the game would no longer appeal to the current audience if those changes were made. Part of game development is accepting that some changes that you want to make, cannot be made now and would have had to have been made before anyone played the game to begin with.
Here we have another error that does not belong here. a) This is above your paygrade. You have created some great guides for NW as have numerous others before you. Yet even with that contribution it doesn't qualify you in any way to judge what 'can' be and you don't have the tools to make any judgments as to what will 'appeal to the current audience'.
b) You can, and do make judgements that cater to YOUR audience and have long worked to dominate and distract the forums to your own ends. You make an initial, and I'll stipulate, often high quality analysis post to buy entry to a given topic. Then however you use that to segway into to bullying others out of the conversation and use 1 tiny extract of giant posts to quash entire genres of ideas.
The CDP process again is a brainstorming session.. and the above behavior is not useful.
The value of an idea is determined by how well it upholds itself in the face of confrontation. If an idea cannot withstand the heat of debate, it is an idea which should probably be discarded, or modified in such a way so that it can. This is how ideas evolve and become better, by being put through scrutiny.
Here again is more of the problem. A CDP is not a debate. Its not a crucible. This isn't a trial, a classroom, a lecture, a corporate meeting, or any other adversarial format. This is collaborative brainstorming where the entire purpose is constructive collective creativity that leads to bigger better ideas that would't have a chance to arise as part of a structured debate.
This is another example of why so few voices are heard on the forums. Shy and less confrontational people have good ideas too but no way to share without exposing themselves to the wolves. And before someone says "this is the internet". no, this isnt the general internet.
And they are right here. This ISNT the internet in general. This isn't even the NW forums in general. As specified at its inception: “In addition to the regular, the CDP subforums are subject to higher standards and expectations. “ “These higher standards and expectations have been set in order to keep discussions on topic, constructive, and maintain a safe and comfortable environment. “
I would support her idea that perhaps inaddition to this CDP format there should be another one that is more unidirectional. One where we cannot (or are moderated such that we do not) respond to other posts other than to expand on them. Reductionary posts or name calling should be moderated away.
Yes you are.. or at least have every reason to be. On cursory search of the forums I can see that both you and Fabricant have been beating on this high horse since at least 2015. Its a pet peave that you both have taken it on yourselves to crusade on.
There is irony in someone saying spreadsheets are dull when they are playing a game which is essentially a spreadsheet with a pretty front end and that goes for any game you play. All games are at their core spreadsheets and you care enough about this particular spreadsheet to spend time arguing about it.
Great! We can go on about how game development indeed literature itself is organic or formulaic..
But the thing is they aren't. For all your talents this gets to the core of your disability. This is akin to saying that the experience of car ownership is nothing more than the content of the satnav, with said statement coming from an amateur satnav designer. No that is a tool within the vehicle that makes some parts of the experience easier to implement. Yes you can change that analogy to say 'engine', 'wheels' or any other sub-component, but whichever you choose it is not the whole. It is also not what we 'play' or 'enjoy', it is a tool.
But alas.. that discussion is once again a distraction, bent on talking about what YOU enjoy to the exclusion of others, bringing the topics back to what YOU have as a hobby. What its not about is new ideas for use in NW to create new content.
You're initial post is great, if quite dry. THAT is what we're here for. So is everything from the mundane to the silly. Talking about AD generations, cool transmutes, character customization as prizes, perhaps buying NW themed 3d models, or purchasing 3d prints of your character, perhaps NW VM messages by voiceactors as PVP chart topping prizes.. whatever it is, NEW IDEAS. Not just pooing on old ones.
A few people have said that the story just isn't there in NW, I agree it isn't.
Which sucks because having a good story is a pretty decent reward in itself. This is not helped when story stuff is put into hard/elite content too.
For example, my current story experience sounds like the most half assed hero ever:
Elemental Evil: Silly elemental cults causing problems everywhere. Fought them and defeated their leaders... except for air queen Aerisi. She used to be in the BHE but when I actually got around to doing it her appearance there was replaced by a random air general. Guess she got away (possibly into an instance I can't replay)? Oh well! 3 out of 4 is still a pass in my book! Storm King's Thunder [with no FBI or Svardborg due to everfrost /fishing BS]: Helped out Bryn Shander and fought the frost giants all the way to the Sea of Moving Ice which seems to be their base. I imagine we taught them a lesson, because the frost king just opts to hide in his castle forever more. Let him keep the ring of winter as a memento of his in-direct defeat! Winning!? Also apparently Makos died along the way, but is somehow better now.
Cloaked Ascendancy [without Spellplague Master]: Beat up Gyrion and his conspirators, apart from that one guy who instead of being jailed runs an arena in the sewers. Whatever. I'm sure since I made them all run away, they'll never come back with a vengeance. Cool. Not like I'll ever sign up to defend Lord Neverember until he pays out his promissory notes anyway.
Chult [with no ToNG or Cradle]: Investigated the death curse and found it might be related to the lich Acererak who has a tomb in Omu somewhere. I even punched him once when he stuck his face out topside (in BHE), causing him to retreat. That concludes the investigation despite never knowing why or how that's come to be. Hey, maybe that stuff I helped Celeste with even cured it a bit - I'm sure Acererak won't be a chump and start it again. Besides I was paid to find the source, not to stop it... I guess?
Undermountain [with no Lomm or Tomm]: People are being drawn in by random portals being opened by a robot and a fairy lich to the dangerous undermountain. Killed one and got lucky that the other left the artifact that opens said portals lying around. I'm sure now that I've destroyed that, there's no way the survivor or that crazy mad wizard I've seen lurking around would have or be able to make spares. Job done!
Ravenloft [with no Castle Ravenloft]: The only one that makes some sense. Stumbled into Barovia and saved a girl from the cursed land, literally having to fight the main evil vamp at his own castle courtyard. Only won thanks to a powerful artifact and even then, Strahd managed to retreat to the shadows of his fortress (*cough* chose to let us go *cough*). Despite not being skilled enough to finish him off, at least I feel like I accomplished something in this campaign! Actually, even just surviving the encounter felt great! :P
Not sure how Ravenloft pulled off such a satisfying single player end, but I'd like more of those in the future please. ^_^
Ah yes, I see there has been much strife in my absence.
I think its important to review why this CDP format is here for us, and specifically why I am here. This structure is explicitly the initial step in a process to elicit new ideas.
From the CDP rules: These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter.
The initial phase of such a process is only useful if people are supported in expressing new ideas and variants on the old. Its not appropriate to evaluate the specifics, discuss the nth detail of implementation, engage in character judgment exercises, or opine on legalistic TOS valuations that are frankly not within the scope of judgment or responsibility for anyone not employed by Cryptic.
Truly we are not here to listen to you Fabricant, mick1p00, or indeed me either. We have an E.P. Taking time out to read page after page of this this drivel even while he is sick in order to spur creativity and life within the Neverwinter community.
Yet we have a subset of individuals that have taken it upon themselves within this format to be the morality police and self styled judges of what 'can be', what will make NW cease to be NW, what qualifies as D&D, what everyone plays for, and what others should enjoy. ..and if you take exception to these sentences you are indeed part of the problem in this context.
You do realize there is a huge difference between calling out an individual or multiple individuals and calling out an idea right? Both of the people you have called out have been with this community forever and have contributed greatly and not even for the monetary rewards that most of the "community contributors" ie streamers are garnering for. Both are very qualified to make statements that something would or wouldn't work for the game as a solid opinion. This thread has had a lot of Wild ideas in it that would probably hurt the game very much if used. mod 16 and mod 6 both saw a huge loss of player base. and there were a multitude of reasons for that. One of which was too much change. this was especially bad with mod 16. if within a year you do it again.. it would result in a complete loss of trust (honestly that's probably already burned thru) and another mass exodus. doing anything more than small tweaks here or there is dangerous especially since there are still so many huge bugs/faults in the game that haven't been ironed out. Everyone has a voice here. but that doesn't mean that because you say something someone else doesn't have a right to come in and state what they think the pitfall of that idea is. One of the problems with this format is the sentence at the bottom saying what you think the pitfall of your idea is. if you think it's a good idea odds are you aren't clearly stating it's negatives or understanding what those might be.
For the sake of transparency I would say that I gave up on NW shortly after mod 16 was introduced on Consoles and I have absolutely no intention of returning to the game I loved whilst the current iteration of NW continues. I rarely post but do keep up with developments through this forum, videos etc.
I have carefully read through all of the proposals and would say that Oremonger has the ideas that most align with my own, although there are excellent suggestions from other posters, including the ones with whom I may not entirely agree or are perhaps a little abrasive.
The only reason that I felt compelled to comment was that these great posts and the whole purpose of this thread are being somewhat undermined by the bickering that has developed over what are, in the greater scheme of the game, irrelevancies. We all have our own opinion as to how the game should be and every view is equally valid at this stage. There is no need for personal attacks which I do think discourage those of us who are of a less combative nature from participating.
1
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
I'm not sure I implied anything about D&D books. I don't really know how to classify them as D&D or not. While today I don't read as much, I'm over ~600 read books, mostly Fantasy and Sci-Fi, that including the Dragonlance series (though it was about 20 year ago), at the time, for me as a teenager, it was great series, now things probably changed as I have much more to compare with, as experience and points of view change.
In regards to NW, I can't point a single mod, where the story was worth following. I'll admit that I'm not impressed with forgotten realms nor read the books nor plan to. But I can point out so so many games that the dialog and story were the driving force there, and none of them is NW, in any mod.
Again I don't point fingers on the devs here, as much as I would like engaging story, I understand the limitations of their release cycle and need for repeated "fetch quests"
I believe you mistake the "subsets" here. I have the original CDs of BG1 with the map still lying around somewhere, and consider planscape torment as one of the better games, with original fallout and many more, including countless hours with old stuff like eye of the beholder. I don't do spreadsheets to play games (yes, shocking), my intuition and reading the in-game information is usually enough to get by, and I don't aim for some hardcore difficulty or whatever. NW a semi exception, that while I still don't aim to min-max to exceptional levels (I was always good stage behind BiS just for the sheer investment it took to upkeep), the tooltips and mechanics explanation were so poorly done that it forced me to sit and try to understand it, because for me there is a limit of how many months I can play and still have no clue which item I want to put on, which then was an incentive to make some tools to make it easier.
But I will not login to NW for the "beat demogorgon with Drizzt", I will login for the community (not the general one, but guild, friends etc.) and the group content I do with them. All the rest is a fluff. And while ofc everyone plays for whatever reason they choose, and I'm not here to tell anyone to not play or not enjoy the parts they want. The complete vast majority of the players, even those that familiar well with the entire background story and lore, do not mainly play because of it. They may started or joined because of it, but stayed for mainly other reasons. (I too tried this game because of the Neverwinter name, and ofc I've liked the original NW:Nights series and Ice wind dale games and so many more D&D / RPG games)
I guess that we agree to disagree. I think that the story in the game at some points is great, especially when the devs put some effort into it (see Ebon Downs). Fluff is very important, it's what makes D&D what it it is. The rest are numbers on a spreadsheet and I see already enough spreadsheets in my job to have to worry about them in a game (I'm with you in not using ACT and just relying upon observation and intuition).
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
2
thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
Ah yes, I see there has been much strife in my absence.
I think its important to review why this CDP format is here for us, and specifically why I am here. This structure is explicitly the initial step in a process to elicit new ideas.
From the CDP rules: These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter.
The initial phase of such a process is only useful if people are supported in expressing new ideas and variants on the old. Its not appropriate to evaluate the specifics, discuss the nth detail of implementation, engage in character judgment exercises, or opine on legalistic TOS valuations that are frankly not within the scope of judgment or responsibility for anyone not employed by Cryptic.
Truly we are not here to listen to you Fabricant, mick1p00, or indeed me either. We have an E.P. Taking time out to read page after page of this this drivel even while he is sick in order to spur creativity and life within the Neverwinter community.
Yet we have a subset of individuals that have taken it upon themselves within this format to be the morality police and self styled judges of what 'can be', what will make NW cease to be NW, what qualifies as D&D, what everyone plays for, and what others should enjoy. ..and if you take exception to these sentences you are indeed part of the problem in this context.
Here we have another error that does not belong here. a) This is above your paygrade. You have created some great guides for NW as have numerous others before you. Yet even with that contribution it doesn't qualify you in any way to judge what 'can' be and you don't have the tools to make any judgments as to what will 'appeal to the current audience'.
b) You can, and do make judgements that cater to YOUR audience and have long worked to dominate and distract the forums to your own ends. You make an initial, and I'll stipulate, often high quality analysis post to buy entry to a given topic. Then however you use that to segway into to bullying others out of the conversation and use 1 tiny extract of giant posts to quash entire genres of ideas.
The CDP process again is a brainstorming session.. and the above behavior is not useful.
Except it is not, as you have put it, "above my paygrade." As per the CDP:
Happy Monday. I will be continuing to comment as necessary. Meanwhile if you all can move onto phase 2 then that would be great. Specifically it is time to drill into the areas and ideas you like, what you want to know more about, collaborate on, challenge (in a valuable way) and evolve.
At the moment we are interested to know more of your thoughts in regard to Horizontal progression, evolution of vertical progression, what variation of current types of rewards you would like to see? This will do for now and of course this is on top of what you all would like to drill into as well.
Looking forward to seeing the next phase of this CDP.
Chris
Whats the purpose of phase 2? The purpose of phase 2 is discussing the merits of other people's ideas and that means, if you think there is a problem with them, you point it out. Notice in this thread, people have called out issues with my ideas and I have responded to them, either acknowledging the issue exists or, explaining why I think that issue does not exist, or adjusting the idea so that the issue is no longer present. And if you do not like that? Tough luck, this isn't a sub forum where you throw an idea out and we all have to put on tinted glasses and pretend its rosy. It is a sub forum where we discuss ideas.
So I came along and pointed out the problem with this idea. I also pointed out the fact that, regardless of what you think, ,that exploit you want to frame as "creative adventuring" is in fact an exploit. It also doesn't take, believe it or not, someone who has worked on game development to figure out if an idea would completely change what a game is. So your appeal to authority here just doesn't work. Is this game a story driven RPG with branching player choices and a dnd ruleset? No it is not. Attempting to make this game that type of game, will guaranteed lose you many of the people who do not want to read the dialogue and who aren't here to read story.
We are now of coarse, completely offtopic. Good thing that the thread is split.
Great! We can go on about how game development indeed literature itself is organic or formulaic..
But the thing is they aren't. For all your talents this gets to the core of your disability. This is akin to saying that the experience of car ownership is nothing more than the content of the satnav, with said statement coming from an amateur satnav designer. No that is a tool within the vehicle that makes some parts of the experience easier to implement. Yes you can change that analogy to say 'engine', 'wheels' or any other sub-component, but whichever you choose it is not the whole. It is also not what we 'play' or 'enjoy', it is a tool.
But alas.. that discussion is once again a distraction, bent on talking about what YOU enjoy to the exclusion of others, bringing the topics back to what YOU have as a hobby. What its not about is new ideas for use in NW to create new content.
You're initial post is great, if quite dry. THAT is what we're here for. So is everything from the mundane to the silly. Talking about AD generations, cool transmutes, character customization as prizes, perhaps buying NW themed 3d models, or purchasing 3d prints of your character, perhaps NW VM messages by voiceactors as PVP chart topping prizes.. whatever it is, NEW IDEAS. Not just pooing on old ones.
I won't comment on the AD Hominum, aside from saying if I was to judge Neverwinter on the quality of its story I would fail it. I used to write creatively at one point, I never tried to published anything because I considered my writing too poor (I like to self criticize) and I could still write a better narrative than the one in Neverwinter, that is how bad I think it is. A story cannot in my mind just stand on the shoulders of some IP in order to claim that it is great, it needs to be able to support itself.
Call that stuff "Fluff" if you want, I call it "Depth".
I would love if the story line in NW, quest lines, and all that was at the level of depth. Perhaps my standards are higher after I've read so many books and played good games.
Like @gabrieldourden said about ToMM, if ToMM would be removed, it wouldn't change much for him. The problem with the story line, that, for me, if I skim read and mostly skip the quest dialogs, vs I'll read them, won't change much.
Is it something I advocate? No, I would love an immersive story, perhaps some choice that affects outcome, at least a bit. Does anyone thinks I've read 600+ books because I don't care about story telling?
The problem is that currently, in NW, IMO (and ofc some will disagree) the story, is just not there.
Perhaps the episodic releases will help with that, to create a more cohesive storyline and allow better text than "reimagine" a fetch quest for the hundred time.
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
I'm not sure I implied anything about D&D books. I don't really know how to classify them as D&D or not. While today I don't read as much, I'm over ~600 read books, mostly Fantasy and Sci-Fi, that including the Dragonlance series (though it was about 20 year ago), at the time, for me as a teenager, it was great series, now things probably changed as I have much more to compare with, as experience and points of view change.
In regards to NW, I can't point a single mod, where the story was worth following. I'll admit that I'm not impressed with forgotten realms nor read the books nor plan to. But I can point out so so many games that the dialog and story were the driving force there, and none of them is NW, in any mod.
Again I don't point fingers on the devs here, as much as I would like engaging story, I understand the limitations of their release cycle and need for repeated "fetch quests"
I believe you mistake the "subsets" here. I have the original CDs of BG1 with the map still lying around somewhere, and consider planscape torment as one of the better games, with original fallout and many more, including countless hours with old stuff like eye of the beholder. I don't do spreadsheets to play games (yes, shocking), my intuition and reading the in-game information is usually enough to get by, and I don't aim for some hardcore difficulty or whatever. NW a semi exception, that while I still don't aim to min-max to exceptional levels (I was always good stage behind BiS just for the sheer investment it took to upkeep), the tooltips and mechanics explanation were so poorly done that it forced me to sit and try to understand it, because for me there is a limit of how many months I can play and still have no clue which item I want to put on, which then was an incentive to make some tools to make it easier.
But I will not login to NW for the "beat demogorgon with Drizzt", I will login for the community (not the general one, but guild, friends etc.) and the group content I do with them. All the rest is a fluff. And while ofc everyone plays for whatever reason they choose, and I'm not here to tell anyone to not play or not enjoy the parts they want. The complete vast majority of the players, even those that familiar well with the entire background story and lore, do not mainly play because of it. They may started or joined because of it, but stayed for mainly other reasons. (I too tried this game because of the Neverwinter name, and ofc I've liked the original NW:Nights series and Ice wind dale games and so many more D&D / RPG games)
I guess that we agree to disagree. I think that the story in the game at some points is great, especially when the devs put some effort into it (see Ebon Downs). Fluff is very important, it's what makes D&D what it it is. The rest are numbers on a spreadsheet and I see already enough spreadsheets in my job to have to worry about them in a game (I'm with you in not using ACT and just relying upon observation and intuition).
Disagreement (when in a discussion) is probably the best tool to learn and create new ideas, or compromises, or to just learn view points.
We disagree about the quality of most of the story aspect in NW, it is subjective to our experience and opinion so that I can't argue. But like I've wrote above, it is not that I consider it not important, the "Fluff" is in the context that it is how it is now ( I would love for it to be major aspect, but I'm not realistically expecting that to happen). I can skip all the text and it will not influence much. It indeed adds, but it is not the core reason for why I play the game. Try for example "Tyranny" (the game) and I hope you will see what I mean. A story telling / world building that is not only adds to the rest aspects of the game, but is a core reason for why it is successful.
In NW, if we list why the majority of the players play it, (And correctly poll the difference between why you started playing and kept playing) I believe it's a very small minority that will put the story line high on the list. (Ofc this is only my impression by hanging a lot in all aspects of NW, social media, discords, alliances and so in)
2
gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
Call that stuff "Fluff" if you want, I call it "Depth".
I would love if the story line in NW, quest lines, and all that was at the level of depth. Perhaps my standards are higher after I've read so many books and played good games.
Like @gabrieldourden said about ToMM, if ToMM would be removed, it wouldn't change much for him. The problem with the story line, that, for me, if I skim read and mostly skip the quest dialogs, vs I'll read them, won't change much.
Is it something I advocate? No, I would love an immersive story, perhaps some choice that affects outcome, at least a bit. Does anyone thinks I've read 600+ books because I don't care about story telling?
The problem is that currently, in NW, IMO (and ofc some will disagree) the story, is just not there.
Perhaps the episodic releases will help with that, to create a more cohesive storyline and allow better text than "reimagine" a fetch quest for the hundred time.
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that. There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM". Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story. More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line. Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake. No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
Mickey, I respect your opinion but my feeling is that you and @thefabricant come from a certain subset of players but there many more out there. By the way some D&D books are pretty good too, say The Legend of Huma for example. The game in the last two mods has ben catering to certain groups of players but there's a vast majority that would enjoy other things.
I'm not sure I implied anything about D&D books. I don't really know how to classify them as D&D or not. While today I don't read as much, I'm over ~600 read books, mostly Fantasy and Sci-Fi, that including the Dragonlance series (though it was about 20 year ago), at the time, for me as a teenager, it was great series, now things probably changed as I have much more to compare with, as experience and points of view change.
In regards to NW, I can't point a single mod, where the story was worth following. I'll admit that I'm not impressed with forgotten realms nor read the books nor plan to. But I can point out so so many games that the dialog and story were the driving force there, and none of them is NW, in any mod.
Again I don't point fingers on the devs here, as much as I would like engaging story, I understand the limitations of their release cycle and need for repeated "fetch quests"
I believe you mistake the "subsets" here. I have the original CDs of BG1 with the map still lying around somewhere, and consider planscape torment as one of the better games, with original fallout and many more, including countless hours with old stuff like eye of the beholder. I don't do spreadsheets to play games (yes, shocking), my intuition and reading the in-game information is usually enough to get by, and I don't aim for some hardcore difficulty or whatever. NW a semi exception, that while I still don't aim to min-max to exceptional levels (I was always good stage behind BiS just for the sheer investment it took to upkeep), the tooltips and mechanics explanation were so poorly done that it forced me to sit and try to understand it, because for me there is a limit of how many months I can play and still have no clue which item I want to put on, which then was an incentive to make some tools to make it easier.
But I will not login to NW for the "beat demogorgon with Drizzt", I will login for the community (not the general one, but guild, friends etc.) and the group content I do with them. All the rest is a fluff. And while ofc everyone plays for whatever reason they choose, and I'm not here to tell anyone to not play or not enjoy the parts they want. The complete vast majority of the players, even those that familiar well with the entire background story and lore, do not mainly play because of it. They may started or joined because of it, but stayed for mainly other reasons. (I too tried this game because of the Neverwinter name, and ofc I've liked the original NW:Nights series and Ice wind dale games and so many more D&D / RPG games)
I guess that we agree to disagree. I think that the story in the game at some points is great, especially when the devs put some effort into it (see Ebon Downs). Fluff is very important, it's what makes D&D what it it is. The rest are numbers on a spreadsheet and I see already enough spreadsheets in my job to have to worry about them in a game (I'm with you in not using ACT and just relying upon observation and intuition).
Disagreement (when in a discussion) is probably the best tool to learn and create new ideas, or compromises, or to just learn view points.
We disagree about the quality of most of the story aspect in NW, it is subjective to our experience and opinion so that I can't argue. But like I've wrote above, it is not that I consider it not important, the "Fluff" is in the context that it is how it is now ( I would love for it to be major aspect, but I'm not realistically expecting that to happen). I can skip all the text and it will not influence much. It indeed adds, but it is not the core reason for why I play the game. Try for example "Tyranny" (the game) and I hope you will see what I mean. A story telling / world building that is not only adds to the rest aspects of the game, but is a core reason for why it is successful.
In NW, if we list why the majority of the players play it, (And correctly poll the difference between why you started playing and kept playing) I believe it's a very small minority that will put the story line high on the list. (Ofc this is only my impression by hanging a lot in all aspects of NW, social media, discords, alliances and so in)
I think here you're touching an interesting point. There's a vast part of players that is not on socials (about the game) and not on discords and similar channels. I've been a guild leader too and I can easily say that 98% of my guild was not there ever and the same was true for other guilds in the alliance. Even thinking about the guild me and Michela were in at some point, only a small fraction of the players was active on social and almost nobody was using voice chat channels. It would be really good to find a tool to give them a voice. This is pretty much what I wanted to stress here, talking about different voices in the games, like those who read the lore, try to immerse more in the game from an imagination point of view and so on. If I look at the type of players you see here on the forum I see a certain bias compared to the average player out there. And honestly I think that partially the voices of people here on the forum have pushed devs in a direction which is not always the one the majority of players would have chosen.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
This is one reason why I've been pushing so hard for side areas in dungeons to be not just unblocked, but *used*. The library room in eCC sure looks like it would have been Kallos Tam's quarters. That right there is an opportunity for, at a minimum, a quest leading to or from the Dread Ring. It could even be used to spawn off a small story arc. Maybe it leads to some special transmutes, or a title, or an achievement, or maybe even something more interesting. Maybe visiting that one room in eCC leads to a series of quests that ultimately lets you unlock an extra area in Valindra's Tower. Was Kallos Tam there with Valindra's blessing? Was he working at cross-purposes to her? There are many zulkirs; were they working for rivals? There are lots of possibilities, but it requires that the devs be willing to put their DM hat on (or even better, their writer hat on). And this is only one blocked-off side area in eCC: there are three others, one including a miniboss that is still there to this day. Side quests are common fare in tabletop D&D and add spice to adventures, which is something sorely lacking in the game today.
The Temple of the Spider also has a side area that is blocked off, one that is quite large. When it was accessible, the first room had a bunch of duergar, but everything beyond it was filled with undead (and a few gelatinous cubes). We're talkng about at least half a dozen distinct rooms in that one complex. Were the duergar spying on the drow? Were they controlling the undead and planning an attack? Were they trying to keep the undead contained? There are no illithids there, so are these free, uncontrolled duergar? There's a story here waiting to be found, a story that could potentially have tendrils reaching to Whispering Caverns and beyond. To me, blocking that area off was downright criminal. It speaks of someone unable to grasp the thrill of discovery -- not of just a side area but of whatever else it could lead to. Instead we have dull, one-dimensional runs to the phat lootz in each of our dungeons, with only the thinnest veneer of story to set them apart.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Early on in this conversation, it reminded me of a tabled session we played years ago. The DM was my husband and three assassins were hired to kill, the Lord of a castle. The Lord was a powerful mage and also a player. After a party the Lord went to another chamber to bed a maid and fell asleep there. While another staff member was killed (in very grotesque manner) in the Lord's chamber. The guards sounded the alarm and the Lord stepped out on the parapet. In moonlight he could see the assassin repelling the high tower on a rope.
Player (as Lord mage): I want him alive! I cast sleep on him. DM: Are you sure that is exactly what you want to do? Player: Of course, he is in range of my spell? DM: Yes, he is in range. Player: I cast sleep on him. DM: The assassin falls asleep... Player: Yes! DM: ...and then plummets 200 feet from the high tower to the rocks below. Player: No! Why? DM: What did you expect him to be wearing safety gear or something?
It is little unexpected actions versus reactions, that no video game will ever be able to capture. Until the game engine becomes self-aware there is little hope that we will ever have unique things happen when we play. Even the idea of a huge database of odd events, will become redundant. You offer 100 random "weird things" to happen in a single dungeon, it might work out for a short time, then it repeats and gets predictable. This is why I say the only way to have the unpredictable in any video game is to offer UGC (user generated content). Oops! Too late that ship sailed.
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
DnD is a set of rules, it is not lore or names of powers. This game uses none of the rules of the dnd system, hence it is not a dnd game. It doesn't matter how much you want to imagine it is, it is not a dnd game, but keep living in that fantasy world in your head where it is.
Didn't see this before but it is plain wrong. The vast majority of the value in D&D as of today is definitely lore. There are 5 editions of D&D with different rules and many people don't even know what other editions than the ones they play look like, but everybody knows what the Tomb of Horror is, who Strahd is, who Acererak is, who Elminster is, who Drizzt is, what the Forgotten Realms are, what the Blood War is and I could go on for quite a while. D&D is mostly lore. 4th and 5th edition are quite different from Mentzer's boxes or AD&D, but the lore moves freely across editions and that's what keeps the D&D family together,
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
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thefabricantMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 5,248Arc User
DnD is a set of rules, it is not lore or names of powers. This game uses none of the rules of the dnd system, hence it is not a dnd game. It doesn't matter how much you want to imagine it is, it is not a dnd game, but keep living in that fantasy world in your head where it is.
Didn't see this before but it is plain wrong. The vast majority of the value in D&D as of today is definitely lore. There are 5 editions of D&D with different rules and many people don't even know what other editions than the ones they play look like, but everybody knows what the Tomb of Horror is, who Strahd is, who Acererak is, who Elminster is, who Drizzt is, what the Forgotten Realms are, what the Blood War is and I could go on for quite a while. D&D is mostly lore. 4th and 5th edition are quite different from Mentzer's boxes or AD&D, but the lore moves freely across editions and that's what keeps the D&D family together,
Maybe to you, but not to me. I know the rules of every edition up to 3.5, the lore, I can't remember any of it, it was completely forgettable. A good fantasy world, in my personal opinion, needs to have some narrative consistency to it and it needs to be in some way believable. Faerûn is anything but that, the world has no verisimilitude. Why do wizards forget spells after casting? They just do. There is no good in world explanation for this, it just is. Sure, in Jack Vance's book where the system was taken from, it makes sense in world, but in Faerûn? Nope.
Things just happen in DnD because they do, they don't follow any logical ordering that you can make sense of in world and as a result of that, you have a setting which is as wide as the ocean but as deep as a puddle, which fails miserably at holding my interest. The world has no depth.
The rules on the other hand, are reasonably good. You can throw away the entire story and make a new one, which does have a good in game explanation for the rules and the game with the new setting but the same rules would work fine. You could have an infinite number of settings, all abiding by those same sets of rules and they could all possibly work.
Comments
Can people, for once, accept that this is a videogame based off a licensed property that has it's own set of defined rules and limitations?
This is not tabletop. You don't get bonus points for figuring out how to break the game. Creativity comes in the form of what gear you wear, what powers you use, what group comp you run with, etc. Saying "I creatively found a way to glitch the system" does not make it any less of an exploit.
You know who else was "creatively adventuring"? All those people "creatively" changing the way they ran hunts.
D&D is a framework for telling a story.
Gary Gygax, the guy who invented it said that the rules were there to be used as and when and how required for the game to be fun.
I've ignored every rule in those books many times over.
At his advice.
"A good DM only rolls the dice for the noise they make" is another Gygax view on D&D, but obviously he would have made a "poor DM".
I have, do, and will continue to break every HAMSTER rule in D&D if it makes for a good game. And I don't need your opinion to validate my ability.
Jesus... if we hadn't reached "Peak Pomposity" with your earlier observations of intellectual dishonesty we're here now.
And I just spent 15 minutes playing that AI dungeon...
Not a great example of how AI is in any way suited to telling a story.
I convinced everyone I met, (who were all called Jack, by the way) that they had stolen my horse, and got them to loot the body of the previous Jack while I sharpened my sword and stabbed them in the throat.
I think it failed the Turing test on it's reply to my first entry which was "ask woman why she shot my HAMSTER deer".
There is a reason humans write stories while computers produce data. Humans possess an imagination. AI can tell a story but it can't create one, and if THAT is the paragon of where emerging technologies are at with replacing Dungeon Masters, I don't give a fiddler's pluck what a data analyst says about whether I'm a "poor DM" or not, I know that my skills will still be required with the players who prefer an imaginative outcome to their imaginative solutions than some android getting in a tizzy about them "exploiting" a scenario that offered a solution that I hadn't thought of. Because I won't to force them to bear "Cheat" as a permanent attachment to their character, I'll say, "Well done, HAMSTER holes... I didn't think of that."
P.S. here's a note on comedy. The only reason the prolonged joke about "Spreadsheets are great" only works because in the real world everyone knows that they are dull.
Very dull, and I first heard the "I Excel-led myself..." joke about 15 years ago at an equally dull seminar, and it was just as funny then... (However, Billy Connolly's use of the "You'll all have to squeeze in a bit" was actually funny 35 years ago)
There is irony in someone saying spreadsheets are dull when they are playing a game which is essentially a spreadsheet with a pretty front end and that goes for any game you play. All games are at their core spreadsheets and you care enough about this particular spreadsheet to spend time arguing about it.
And as has been mentioned by numerous people in this thread, this game is not dnd. It is an mmo, set in the dnd universe. It doesn't even resemble dnd. People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game.
The spreadsheet as you describe it is a mean to let the story unfold and to let me have fun on the action side of the game, no more than that. I have no interest in ACT, no interest in evaluating the impact of small bonuses, very little interest in stats. I want to play an action game within a D&D world and that's what keeps me in this game.
Sorry but AI is way from being as imaginative as a DM. A good DM can pull content out of nowhere in seconds, can adapt a story to its players, can look in the eyes of a player and see that some detail hooked his-her attention and build around it. There may be a day when AI would be as good as a Dm but that's way in the future.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
That "AI dungeon" is not "AI", it's a machine learning "hack" (it was actually first made at a hackaton IIRC) that is interesting experiment, but nothing more than that.
There is no AI. AI is just a buzz word used as a gimmick. OpenAI the piece of software that powers that specific example can do many things, but while the name is all buzzy wazzy, it's a Neural Network Machine learning system, and just that.
Such system that can reach human capability in terms of "DMing" perhaps within reach, but I don't see companies like IBM do a "Lets close the Watson and focus all our research in making an AD&D Virtual DM".
Don't forget that a human is limited to their imagination and set of experiences, such program perhaps will be limited to its programed "imagination" but not limited in examples to learn from, when you can process every written word humans created (I don't want to go into the actually interesting part of learning machines that they "learn to emulate imagination").
In any case, and I don't mean this as in insult to the players nor the game, but I don't see a good reason to play Neverwinter for the story.
More so I consider the story as the weakest side of it.
I can understand the limitations, and I don't expect someone to do an amazing story when they need to fill it with daily fetch quests for 3 months of a mod life in probably at max month work, and do all the surrounding story line.
Anyway, there are good story driven games, they are not f2p MMOs, Mass Effect comes to mind, or larian studios which invest a lot into it. And there are good books, I've red one or two, or some hundreds.
NW in many ways is a clickbait in that regard, it pulls people who are fans of the Forgotten Realms or D&D in general but it's at its base an MMO in a setting and relativity good combat system.
When we keep playing the game, I believe we learn what to expect, and like the combat oriented MMORPG that it is, I would say it is a glorified spreadsheet with built in chat. Not a spreadsheet in terms of "is +10 power better than +10 jumping" but a spreadsheet that makes the dice rolls, tracks the goblins you fight, and the loot you get. But if something it is not, is a PnP game where the story is the driving force, imagination is key, and player creativity in over-smartassing the DM is the cherry on top of the cake.
No, here, over-smart-assing the "spreadsheet" is violation of the ToS.
This is another example of why so few voices are heard on the forums. Shy and less confrontational people have good ideas too but no way to share without exposing themselves to the wolves. And before someone says "this is the internet". no, this isnt the general internet. this is a place where we come because we share a love for a GAME. Everyone that wants a voice should be able to share in its development (since input has been asked for) even if they dont have that confrontational personality that people seems to think are required for valid input. Long before today, I have wanted some sort of way to submit in-game feedback without coming to the forums. Other games have it where you can submit an idea in-game that may not warrant a whole post or you can even give kudos for some detail you liked. (NW currently just uses this for bug reporting)
Back to the current topic. Looking over posts its clear that people are not looking to destroy the game..quite the opposite. Everyone here wants to see the game succeed. They are not your enemies and their ideas/opinions/playstyles are just as valid.
This is what brainstorming is: throwing out ideas, even if they are way out there, and see where things go. .after all, we were invited along to help in "building worlds" and that statement was clearly suppose to inspire us and spark our imaginations. As a long-time gamer, i enjoy the thinking outside of the box ideas brought up. some of the stories reminded me of when I first got into gaming and was exploring my environments, always looking for possibilities.
"People need to either learn to accept that the game they are playing is not the tabletop experience they want, or they should find another game."
Perhaps, it may not ultimately be the game some of us hope it will be, but it certainly wont be if people dont share their ideas. The directions the game has been going apparently isnt working for enough people, so some alternate perspectives are needed.
The spirit of what a lot of people are asking for is simply more options. What this debate has demonstrated is that peoples perceptions of fun are different. Increasing options could potentially cater to both types of people debating. After all, in D&D there is room for both Lawful Good and Chaotic Good alignments to exist
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Not everybody wants to be the last 1% to squeeze out 0.1% dmg, and that you seem to think the game HAS to be about that is in itself an opinion and NOT what the others "have to learn" or "have to understand" or have to sit in a lesson about player perception.
We are all here because we enjoy something about the game, and to think that the game would only have a healthy existence if it followed your guidelines of gaming is simply not true. No matter how often you try to push your narrative on others, or trying to devalue others wishes for the game. This is not about elitism in the game, or about tomm, or about how often you help your guildmates, it is about devaluing others to improve the value of your own opinions.
It's fine you think you value well written fantasy, it might be true, but others do think different, and both is no good sole (!) viewpoint to impact the game, no matter how elaborate you might word it.
You can tell people 100 times that it is "only" a mmo and they have to get over it, but NW didn't sell as just a MMO. There are other MMOs. Dnd is NWs USP. You cannot have NW as only a MMO, and NW is not only dnd.
That does not cut short what you have done for the community, or what you continue to do for guildmates or whoever, I don't know, because I care for my guildmates and whoever as I am able and from where I come from, too.
All in all this has been a lot of input already on the CDP, and the decision what we will see in the game is not on us (I hope its not, cause who really is on the forum? Mostly everybody on the last five pages I already know from the forums, some even ingame), no matter how nice it is sold now. If it is heavily influenced by what you wrote, then so be it, thats fine. You make valid arguments, and you will be right for the kind of game you want to see.
(I did not yet read the last post, I will tho. It was on after I was done writing)
In regards to NW, I can't point a single mod, where the story was worth following. I'll admit that I'm not impressed with forgotten realms nor read the books nor plan to. But I can point out so so many games that the dialog and story were the driving force there, and none of them is NW, in any mod.
Again I don't point fingers on the devs here, as much as I would like engaging story, I understand the limitations of their release cycle and need for repeated "fetch quests"
I believe you mistake the "subsets" here. I have the original CDs of BG1 with the map still lying around somewhere, and consider planscape torment as one of the better games, with original fallout and many more, including countless hours with old stuff like eye of the beholder. I don't do spreadsheets to play games (yes, shocking), my intuition and reading the in-game information is usually enough to get by, and I don't aim for some hardcore difficulty or whatever. NW a semi exception, that while I still don't aim to min-max to exceptional levels (I was always good stage behind BiS just for the sheer investment it took to upkeep), the tooltips and mechanics explanation were so poorly done that it forced me to sit and try to understand it, because for me there is a limit of how many months I can play and still have no clue which item I want to put on, which then was an incentive to make some tools to make it easier.
But I will not login to NW for the "beat demogorgon with Drizzt", I will login for the community (not the general one, but guild, friends etc.) and the group content I do with them. All the rest is a fluff. And while ofc everyone plays for whatever reason they choose, and I'm not here to tell anyone to not play or not enjoy the parts they want. The complete vast majority of the players, even those that familiar well with the entire background story and lore, do not mainly play because of it. They may started or joined because of it, but stayed for mainly other reasons. (I too tried this game because of the Neverwinter name, and ofc I've liked the original NW:Nights series and Ice wind dale games and so many more D&D / RPG games)
I do not argue about subjective parts. About implications of hard content, and tiered, or other design considerations, sure.
This more or less started about the spikes and the boss, and I'm 100% for an option to pull the boss to some piked corridor, where, for example, players need to run in parallel corridor, ahead of the tank, clear them from evil things, press buttons to cover the spikes, temprarly so the tank can continue, while pushing the boss through the spikes and killing him, that was not the case there.
Would love some alternate options which are not purely smash and bash, and I can find posts of mine about it from years ago (please don't actually ask me to do this, it will be extremely time consuming with my post count, but trust me it's there)
Or the throwing mobs into the lava in SP, imo it was a great shame it was removed. Using the terrain should be part of the game, and more of it. If it was up to me, SP lava would be a thing or throwing mobs from a cliff. In M18 closed beta, it was one of the first things I asked to try in Citadel run (can we push them there) and I was disappointed to discover that no. I suggested that it will be great fun if imps can be pushed and drag a player with them :P
But regardless of my personal wishes of alternate game styles, there is no single doubt to me, that pushing the boss outside that specific room through a barrier that was intended to prevent exactly that, was a bug, and not intended in the dungeon design.
---
We probably should ask a mod to move this discussion to some new open thread, where we can continue without offtopicing the CDP. Though perhaps it is something that will interest some powers that be.
I am also not trying to devalue anyone else's point of view (although, I concede I probably come across as if I am). But I will argue with people if I disagree with them. The fact of the matter is, even if you could magically turn this into a dnd game, you shouldn't. The funny thing is, I would probably still play that game, because I like rpgs. There are a lot of people however, who would not play that game, because that is not the game nw is and it is not a change that should be made.
Could NW do alternate dungeon solutions? Yes, but its very resource intensive to do it in a way that does not upset the people who play NW because it is an MMO. It is probably not a good idea to do so. Just like alternate quest solutions are also very resource intensive and that is something that chris has already said will not be happening. The fact is, shoehorning things like the eCC exploit into the game as a legitimate solution just isn't something you can directly do without putting some effort into modifying how it is done, because the time to kill the boss is different for pitting vs killing and thus would need to be balanced differently in terms of rewards.
If you honestly think calling spreadsheets dull is ironic because all games are just glorified spreadsheets, then I think I've found the issue. You either don't understand irony, or why humans play games. I'll admit that a spreadsheet can be useful in keeping track of stuff...(note books and pencils work just as well in human games) but to call D&D a spreadsheet is just reductive nonsense. Show me "Dungeons and Dragons" the spreadsheet, and I'll show you a completely pointless waste of time and effort.
(There's a reason they come in a narrative, informative, book format; the humans who play these games like to have things presented to them in less sterile data streams than the efficiency of the mighty spreadsheet.)
You keep saying "It's not D&D it's an MMO" like those two things are somehow mutually exclusive.
D&D has existed in different formats since there were two variants of the game in table top form, Basic and Advanced.
I also had "Eye of the Beholder" for my Commodore Amiga, and it said "Dungeons and Dragons" on the box but I'm guessing that was wrong too...
Anyway, I know you don't like that some of us want the game to be more reflective of it's source material. That's why you said; ...when people simply wanted the new spell for Wizards to be changed to "Fireball" during the Mod 16 Preview feedback.
Patronising, pompous, and guess what. Not only did the devs change it to Fireball, (because... FFS, why wouldn't they) the fact that they did so made into the marketing for Mod 16!
They actually seemed keen to share it.
The wizards in our D&D game finally have the most iconic spell in D&D...
What's most baffling is why you can't see why that stuff matters. You don't see that human connection, therefore it's irrelevant, and those who do see it are deluded fantasists, and should be looking for another game...
As long as Cryptic are using the character classes, races, Gods, monsters, and lore of the Forgotten Realms in an officially licensed game that bears it's name... guess what sunshine... YOU don't get to decide.
D&D became more than "a set of rules" a long time ago. Before the first D&D mmo, before the first "modder" uploaded their own created content for NWN, and before the movies, and comic books, and novels, and probably all the way back to the damnable cartoon series in the mid 80's.
YOU don't get to decide.
I know that's a phrase you aren't used to hearing but sorry, Neverwinter, the mmo, IS Dungeons and Dragons.
I know that because it says Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter every time I load the game, and WoTC haven't sued anyone over it.
Make this game all about the vertical vs horizontal progression inter-matrices and stack the pie charts to the roof as much as you want, create a soulless vessel for you to forge the next BiS guide to ladder climbing, but forget the heart and soul of the game that brought a lot of us to it at your peril. And repeatedly describing people who hold fast to the idea that the game IS Dungeons and Dragons as witless fantasists is the road to go down if you do want to HAMSTER us off.
But to be fair, it wouldn't hurt Cryptic if I moved over to another game, because the people down the hall at Star Trek seem to understand that if you keep the core of the subject matter central to the game, oddly enough you don't need to keep redesigning the framework every couple of years.
I'm not here for Dnd, either, but many of my friends are. I can see the difficulty of creating something that is supposed to satisfy all of us as equally as possible. I'm not exactly sure about how we got here either, but thank you for elaborating. I believe you have posts about nearly everything, so I will not ask
You are right, I do not understand it (or at least, I seldomly do, I try) and I won't try to tell if you can see mine, because I think we (our minds) work very differently. I have an emotional approach to respones, I assume, which is a problem with how well (or not at all) I can approach a topic, I apologize.
Alternate dungeon solutions are an option, and they can consider it. In the end, it is like you said, about resources, priority, and ultimately about what kind of player they think they need to keep the most.
This is something that we kept hearing about all the time, resources. They have the resources to do an (in)complete overhaul of something only to abandon it later, and we are here late in the evening (for me) discussing all of this because ultimately, they miscalculated. After all, using ecc as an example for alternate dungeon running methods may not have been the best idea, but I am pretty sure everybody could've seen past that, if they wanted.
Lending players an ear for the first time in who knows how long was bound to create some very extensive (and intense) arguments about even the smallest things, but in the end, ingame, mostly everybody that has been playing NW for some time has some idea about exploiting and what it is. Most people I play with know that. Before huntgate, this was handled more carelessly, now for every little bug there is at least one alliance member asking "Is that an exploit?"
I am not telling guild members to glitch bosses, nor do I think they will give us this ingame. I'm not an idiot. But it is very telling that new players may not know much about mechanics of FBI, but they might still ask about the glitch they have seen in a vid.
NW has had a history with a lot of weird stuff staying ingame for a weirdly long time, that we are discussing exploits again after the cursed huntgate-something-thread is just telling that it has been a part of the game for too long to leave doors open so wide that people wonder if it is really illegal to go in.
But yes, I am aware that a wide open door is still not an invite.
(I'll go to bed now)
However, it doesn't have to be that way. I would totally like to see the game be more story-centric. If they did, in an immersive way, I would totally delete my cleric (I really never look forward to playing that class) and replay the game just to experience it. Improving the storyline doesn't mean they need to forget about combat. A good story is rewarding when you can feel compelled to pay attention to it.
As for combat, I would like to see some of the old features (pre-m16) of some powers come back, they made combat feel more dynamic (I'm looking at you entangling force on tab). Those little additional features were rewarding in and of themselves when they were effective in combat, even just as a utility that wasn't majorly game changing.
Just a couple things that affect the feel of the game, and give our brains little squirts of dopamine that keep us entertained. This is probably why so many people don't like the long CD's on encounter powers that came with the removal of Recovery, much fewer jolts of brain juicy goodness and much less frequent. Although, there are times when the stars align and your daily and encounters and stealth and artifact are all ready to go, and for 10 seconds you get a nice exhilarating thrill (that's what she said at least).
Point being that there are "micro" and "macro" rewards. The micro-rewards might be worth investigating as well, such as emotional investment in the story, side quests, the extra effects we lost on powers, increasing proc-rates and reducing magnitudes on some features (basically just to increase animation rate (think SS on CW)) of some features (think slot-machine effect, but for powers). The "macro-rewards" being stuff like items (gear, mounts, pets...), achievements, titles, and stuff like that.
I think we've drilled in a lot into gear/stats as rewards, and a lot of people have spoke about horizontal/vertical progression. I put in a few ideas for SH's, and I think I could expand on that, go into more detail, maybe clear it up a bit, but I'm sure there's a lot more we could do for SH's than the basics ideas I put forward.
What else are we supposed to be talking about?
I think its important to review why this CDP format is here for us, and specifically why I am here. This structure is explicitly the initial step in a process to elicit new ideas.
From the CDP rules:
These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter.
The initial phase of such a process is only useful if people are supported in expressing new ideas and variants on the old. Its not appropriate to evaluate the specifics, discuss the nth detail of implementation, engage in character judgment exercises, or opine on legalistic TOS valuations that are frankly not within the scope of judgment or responsibility for anyone not employed by Cryptic.
Truly we are not here to listen to you Fabricant, mick1p00, or indeed me either. We have an E.P. Taking time out to read page after page of this this drivel even while he is sick in order to spur creativity and life within the Neverwinter community.
Yet we have a subset of individuals that have taken it upon themselves within this format to be the morality police and self styled judges of what 'can be', what will make NW cease to be NW, what qualifies as D&D, what everyone plays for, and what others should enjoy. ..and if you take exception to these sentences you are indeed part of the problem in this context. Here we have another error that does not belong here.
a) This is above your paygrade. You have created some great guides for NW as have numerous others before you. Yet even with that contribution it doesn't qualify you in any way to judge what 'can' be and you don't have the tools to make any judgments as to what will 'appeal to the current audience'.
b) You can, and do make judgements that cater to YOUR audience and have long worked to dominate and distract the forums to your own ends. You make an initial, and I'll stipulate, often high quality analysis post to buy entry to a given topic. Then however you use that to segway into to bullying others out of the conversation and use 1 tiny extract of giant posts to quash entire genres of ideas.
The CDP process again is a brainstorming session.. and the above behavior is not useful. Here again is more of the problem. A CDP is not a debate. Its not a crucible. This isn't a trial, a classroom, a lecture, a corporate meeting, or any other adversarial format. This is collaborative brainstorming where the entire purpose is constructive collective creativity that leads to bigger better ideas that would't have a chance to arise as part of a structured debate. And they are right here. This ISNT the internet in general. This isn't even the NW forums in general. As specified at its inception:
“In addition to the regular, the CDP subforums are subject to higher standards and expectations.
“
“These higher standards and expectations have been set in order to keep discussions on topic, constructive, and maintain a safe and comfortable environment. “
I would support her idea that perhaps inaddition to this CDP format there should be another one that is more unidirectional. One where we cannot (or are moderated such that we do not) respond to other posts other than to expand on them. Reductionary posts or name calling should be moderated away. Yes you are.. or at least have every reason to be. On cursory search of the forums I can see that both you and Fabricant have been beating on this high horse since at least 2015. Its a pet peave that you both have taken it on yourselves to crusade on.
https://arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1203181/mod-7-too-easy/p5 Great! We can go on about how game development indeed literature itself is organic or formulaic..
But the thing is they aren't. For all your talents this gets to the core of your disability. This is akin to saying that the experience of car ownership is nothing more than the content of the satnav, with said statement coming from an amateur satnav designer. No that is a tool within the vehicle that makes some parts of the experience easier to implement. Yes you can change that analogy to say 'engine', 'wheels' or any other sub-component, but whichever you choose it is not the whole. It is also not what we 'play' or 'enjoy', it is a tool.
But alas.. that discussion is once again a distraction, bent on talking about what YOU enjoy to the exclusion of others, bringing the topics back to what YOU have as a hobby. What its not about is new ideas for use in NW to create new content.
You're initial post is great, if quite dry. THAT is what we're here for. So is everything from the mundane to the silly. Talking about AD generations, cool transmutes, character customization as prizes, perhaps buying NW themed 3d models, or purchasing 3d prints of your character, perhaps NW VM messages by voiceactors as PVP chart topping prizes.. whatever it is, NEW IDEAS. Not just pooing on old ones.
For example, my current story experience sounds like the most half assed hero ever:
Elemental Evil:
Silly elemental cults causing problems everywhere. Fought them and defeated their leaders... except for air queen Aerisi. She used to be in the BHE but when I actually got around to doing it her appearance there was replaced by a random air general. Guess she got away (possibly into an instance I can't replay)? Oh well! 3 out of 4 is still a pass in my book!
Storm King's Thunder [with no FBI or Svardborg due to everfrost /fishing BS]:
Helped out Bryn Shander and fought the frost giants all the way to the Sea of Moving Ice which seems to be their base. I imagine we taught them a lesson, because the frost king just opts to hide in his castle forever more. Let him keep the ring of winter as a memento of his in-direct defeat! Winning!? Also apparently Makos died along the way, but is somehow better now.
Cloaked Ascendancy [without Spellplague Master]:
Beat up Gyrion and his conspirators, apart from that one guy who instead of being jailed runs an arena in the sewers. Whatever. I'm sure since I made them all run away, they'll never come back with a vengeance. Cool. Not like I'll ever sign up to defend Lord Neverember until he pays out his promissory notes anyway.
Chult [with no ToNG or Cradle]:
Investigated the death curse and found it might be related to the lich Acererak who has a tomb in Omu somewhere. I even punched him once when he stuck his face out topside (in BHE), causing him to retreat. That concludes the investigation despite never knowing why or how that's come to be. Hey, maybe that stuff I helped Celeste with even cured it a bit - I'm sure Acererak won't be a chump and start it again. Besides I was paid to find the source, not to stop it... I guess?
Undermountain [with no Lomm or Tomm]:
People are being drawn in by random portals being opened by a robot and a fairy lich to the dangerous undermountain. Killed one and got lucky that the other left the artifact that opens said portals lying around. I'm sure now that I've destroyed that, there's no way the survivor or that crazy mad wizard I've seen lurking around would have or be able to make spares. Job done!
Ravenloft [with no Castle Ravenloft]:
The only one that makes some sense. Stumbled into Barovia and saved a girl from the cursed land, literally having to fight the main evil vamp at his own castle courtyard. Only won thanks to a powerful artifact and even then, Strahd managed to retreat to the shadows of his fortress (*cough* chose to let us go *cough*). Despite not being skilled enough to finish him off, at least I feel like I accomplished something in this campaign! Actually, even just surviving the encounter felt great! :P
Not sure how Ravenloft pulled off such a satisfying single player end, but I'd like more of those in the future please. ^_^
I have carefully read through all of the proposals and would say that Oremonger has the ideas that most align with my own, although there are excellent suggestions from other posters, including the ones with whom I may not entirely agree or are perhaps a little abrasive.
The only reason that I felt compelled to comment was that these great posts and the whole purpose of this thread are being somewhat undermined by the bickering that has developed over what are, in the greater scheme of the game, irrelevancies. We all have our own opinion as to how the game should be and every view is equally valid at this stage. There is no need for personal attacks which I do think discourage those of us who are of a less combative nature from participating.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
So I came along and pointed out the problem with this idea. I also pointed out the fact that, regardless of what you think, ,that exploit you want to frame as "creative adventuring" is in fact an exploit. It also doesn't take, believe it or not, someone who has worked on game development to figure out if an idea would completely change what a game is. So your appeal to authority here just doesn't work. Is this game a story driven RPG with branching player choices and a dnd ruleset? No it is not. Attempting to make this game that type of game, will guaranteed lose you many of the people who do not want to read the dialogue and who aren't here to read story.
We are now of coarse, completely offtopic. Good thing that the thread is split. I won't comment on the AD Hominum, aside from saying if I was to judge Neverwinter on the quality of its story I would fail it. I used to write creatively at one point, I never tried to published anything because I considered my writing too poor (I like to self criticize) and I could still write a better narrative than the one in Neverwinter, that is how bad I think it is. A story cannot in my mind just stand on the shoulders of some IP in order to claim that it is great, it needs to be able to support itself.
Perhaps my standards are higher after I've read so many books and played good games.
Like @gabrieldourden said about ToMM, if ToMM would be removed, it wouldn't change much for him.
The problem with the story line, that, for me, if I skim read and mostly skip the quest dialogs, vs I'll read them, won't change much.
Is it something I advocate? No, I would love an immersive story, perhaps some choice that affects outcome, at least a bit.
Does anyone thinks I've read 600+ books because I don't care about story telling?
The problem is that currently, in NW, IMO (and ofc some will disagree) the story, is just not there.
Perhaps the episodic releases will help with that, to create a more cohesive storyline and allow better text than "reimagine" a fetch quest for the hundred time.
Disagreement (when in a discussion) is probably the best tool to learn and create new ideas, or compromises, or to just learn view points.
We disagree about the quality of most of the story aspect in NW, it is subjective to our experience and opinion so that I can't argue.
But like I've wrote above, it is not that I consider it not important, the "Fluff" is in the context that it is how it is now ( I would love for it to be major aspect, but I'm not realistically expecting that to happen). I can skip all the text and it will not influence much. It indeed adds, but it is not the core reason for why I play the game.
Try for example "Tyranny" (the game) and I hope you will see what I mean. A story telling / world building that is not only adds to the rest aspects of the game, but is a core reason for why it is successful.
In NW, if we list why the majority of the players play it, (And correctly poll the difference between why you started playing and kept playing) I believe it's a very small minority that will put the story line high on the list. (Ofc this is only my impression by hanging a lot in all aspects of NW, social media, discords, alliances and so in)
This is pretty much what I wanted to stress here, talking about different voices in the games, like those who read the lore, try to immerse more in the game from an imagination point of view and so on.
If I look at the type of players you see here on the forum I see a certain bias compared to the average player out there. And honestly I think that partially the voices of people here on the forum have pushed devs in a direction which is not always the one the majority of players would have chosen.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
The Temple of the Spider also has a side area that is blocked off, one that is quite large. When it was accessible, the first room had a bunch of duergar, but everything beyond it was filled with undead (and a few gelatinous cubes). We're talkng about at least half a dozen distinct rooms in that one complex. Were the duergar spying on the drow? Were they controlling the undead and planning an attack? Were they trying to keep the undead contained? There are no illithids there, so are these free, uncontrolled duergar? There's a story here waiting to be found, a story that could potentially have tendrils reaching to Whispering Caverns and beyond. To me, blocking that area off was downright criminal. It speaks of someone unable to grasp the thrill of discovery -- not of just a side area but of whatever else it could lead to. Instead we have dull, one-dimensional runs to the phat lootz in each of our dungeons, with only the thinnest veneer of story to set them apart.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
Player (as Lord mage): I want him alive! I cast sleep on him.
DM: Are you sure that is exactly what you want to do?
Player: Of course, he is in range of my spell?
DM: Yes, he is in range.
Player: I cast sleep on him.
DM: The assassin falls asleep...
Player: Yes!
DM: ...and then plummets 200 feet from the high tower to the rocks below.
Player: No! Why?
DM: What did you expect him to be wearing safety gear or something?
It is little unexpected actions versus reactions, that no video game will ever be able to capture. Until the game engine becomes self-aware there is little hope that we will ever have unique things happen when we play. Even the idea of a huge database of odd events, will become redundant. You offer 100 random "weird things" to happen in a single dungeon, it might work out for a short time, then it repeats and gets predictable. This is why I say the only way to have the unpredictable in any video game is to offer UGC (user generated content). Oops! Too late that ship sailed.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Things just happen in DnD because they do, they don't follow any logical ordering that you can make sense of in world and as a result of that, you have a setting which is as wide as the ocean but as deep as a puddle, which fails miserably at holding my interest. The world has no depth.
The rules on the other hand, are reasonably good. You can throw away the entire story and make a new one, which does have a good in game explanation for the rules and the game with the new setting but the same rules would work fine. You could have an infinite number of settings, all abiding by those same sets of rules and they could all possibly work.
Complete with strikethroughs, if possible to edit into the title.
Also, Sharpedgelord, you should know better than to diss D&D lore, all it does is paint a big fat bullseye on your back.
But I suppose we have nothing better to do until we get to see how Chris implements CDP feedback, so go ahead and make more drama.